Taking the Nicholas School 'Challenge' Changed Norm's Life

by Scottee Cantrell

Norman L. "Norm" Christensen Jr.

Norman L. Christensen Jr. says it was a sense of "parentship" that led him in 1990 to seek the deanship of the new School of Environment. He had chaired the Provost’s Committee on Environmental Science and Policy, which recommended creating the new school, and then, with his colleagues, he shepherded the proposal through the approval of Duke’s trustees. "This was something that I had invested a lot of intellectual energy and biological energy in developing, and I really wanted to see it happen. Being named dean in 1991 was a transforming moment, and he says he is "eternally grateful for the opportunity. It actually changed my life."

In the 10 years since he stepped down as chair of the Botany Department and took over the leadership of what is now the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, he has overseen enormous change: the construction and occupation of new space in the Levine Science Research Center (LSRC); large increases in the size of faculty, research funding and the MEM program; creation of the Coastal Environmental Management program and two undergraduate majors; growth in the school’s endowment from less than $5 million to more than $94 million; establishment of 11 new endowed faculty chairs,and greatly increased national and international recognition.

Widely respected and beloved, Norm, as he is universally known, will return to teaching this summer. Recently, he shared in conversation some thoughts about the challenge of leading a new school and what he sees for its future. Here are some of his comments:

Q: What were your biggest challenges in shaping the new school?

N: I think there were several challenges actually, and certainly funding for the LSRC was one. But I think there’s also some truth to the old adage; ‘If you can fix it with money, it’s not a big problem.’ ...The bigger challenge was developing an integrated vision for the school and developing, not only on my part but on the part of my colleagues, a way of thinking differently about where and how we were going to be in the future. ... I think that the programs that comprised the school have at one time or another in he last 20 years been programs that have been in trouble. That is to say that theywere programs the university felt it might be able to do away with or diminish. So to me, the challenge was to create a program that would be so integral to the mission of the university, so central, such a crown jewel, that the university could not imagine that kind of question... That meant really rethinking how we saw ourselves relative to the university. It meant being very clear about what our mission was regarding professional education and about being a professional school. It meant, for me, making a very strong commitment to undergraduate education, I think mostly because that really is the heart of Duke’s educational mission.

Q: What are you most proud of accomplishing?

N: I think I’m most proud of having led a process that has produced something that is truly unique. ... I think the Nicholas School is seen as one of the very best environmental programs in the country, maybe the best professional program in the country.... I think we’re also seen as having created a new vision and an approach to doing environment within a university – an approach that’s interdisciplinary, an approach that cuts across the social sciences and natural sciences – and one that emphasizes the centrality of environment in a way that I think was very unique at the time it was created. ... I’m very proud of that.

Q: Are there any particular stories that you think represent your time here, things that happened to you when you first started that you didn’t expect?

N: I think one of the things that scared me the most about coming here was the idea of fund-raising. I had this vision of fund-raising as walking door-to-door, knocking and asking, "Would you give me a $100?"... But one of the things that I have found most rewarding is working with the wonderful people who have donated money – from those who have given $10 to those who have donated millions – and discovering that most people who think seriously about giving things away do it because they enjoy it and because they want to see something happen. ... Fund-raising is a form of teaching, of articulating and communicating to people who want to make something happen in the world, what it is you’re going to do and how it matches up with their vision. In reality, it certainly isn’t the kind of situation that I had envisioned. It’s been a wonderful experience, and it has very much affected me personally from the standpoint of thinking that even if you only have $100 to give away, that you ought to enjoy it. That you should think about what it is that matters to you most in the world and then get involved and care about it.

Q: When you look into the future, what do you see for the school?

N: This is a very dynamic area. It’s an area where the problems 10 years from now are going to be different from those that we know today, and the way we think about those problems and the political environment within which we think about them will be different. ... So, I really believe that we’ve got to be focused on change - change management, not for change sake. ... I really believe that the school, having come together in a process that over its last 10 years added the geo-science program, is at a very important position. But there’s a great deal of unifying that needs to happen. ... I think in very specific terms there are particular areas that need real attention such as the needs of the Marine Laboratory.... I think we need to really work on and build our strengths in social sciences. This isn’t neglect of the other areas, but to say it’s one of the areas that we aspire to being very good, and we aren’t as good as we want to be... I think it’s absolutely critical that over the next five years the school come up with a plan for consolidating everything that it does on the Durham campus of Duke University. ... We didn’t have Earth and Ocean Sciences in mind when we built the LSRC, and that’s an unfortunate artifact of history. ... So long as people are separated in different locations, there will always be fragmentation. ... That’s going to require more resources and mean that we have to continue to be entrepreneurs. We have tremendous opportunities because of the generosity of important donors in creating endowments to recruit new faculty at both the junior level and the distinguished level. That is how we change, more than any other way. ... The opportunity to bring in new blood and redirect programs is really about being able to recruit new people.